With the increasing popularity and complexity of Internet and intranet applications, the task of managing Web site content and maintaining Web site effectiveness has become increasingly difficult. Company Webmasters and business managers are routinely faced with a wide array of burdensome tasks, including, for example, the identification and repair of large numbers of broken links (i.e., links to missing URLs), the monitoring and organization of large volumes of diverse, continuously-changing Web site content, and the detection and management of congested links. These problems are particularly troublesome for companies that rely on their respective Web sites to provide mission-critical information and services to customers and business partners.
Several software companies have developed software products which address some of these problems by generating graphical maps of Web site content and providing tools for navigating and managing the content displayed within the maps. Examples of such software tools include WebMapper.TM. from Netcarta Corporation and WebAnalyzer.TM. from InContext Corporation. Unfortunately, the graphical site maps generated by these products tend to be difficult to navigate, and fail to convey much of the information needed by Webmasters to effectively manage complex Web sites. As a result, many companies continue to resort to the burdensome task of manually generating large, paper-based maps of their Web sites. In addition, many of these products are only capable of mapping certain types of Web pages, and do not provide the types of analysis tools needed by Webmasters to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of Web sites.
Another problem in the field of Web site and intranet management relates to the ability of the site to handle peak loads. The heavy use of a site can lead to a significant degradation in performance, or even a complete loss of service. Examples of Web sites that have undergone severe performance degradations during heavy use include the IBM Olympic site during the 1996 summer olympics, and the CNN Interactive Election Day site during the 1996 presidential election.
Mercury Interactive Corporation, the assignee of the present application, has addressed this problem by developing software tools that allow companies to load-test their World Wide Web and intranet sites. Mercury Interactive's LoadRunner.RTM. 4.5 and Astra.TM. SiteTest 1.0 products, for example, include functionality for sending large volumes of client requests (representing hundreds or thousands of concurrent users) to a site while monitoring the site's performance. These products use a virtual user executable, or "Vuser," to send the client requests to the Web site while monitoring the site's performance. The Vuser sends the client requests to the site according to a pre-defined test script (also referred to as a "Vuser script" or "Web script"), which is in the general form of a list of the HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol) messages to be sent to the site. In one implementation, up to 50 Vusers can be run concurrently on a single Windows.TM. NT or 95 workstation, with different Vusers using different test scripts.